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5640
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Spinoza's three levels of knowledge are perception/imagination, then principles, then intuitions [Spinoza, by Scruton]
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Full Idea:
For Spinoza there are three levels of knowledge: first, sense perception or imagination, second, reasoned reflection leading to principles, and third (the highest), intuition, in which the adequacy of an idea is immediately known.
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From:
report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6
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A reaction:
This notion of rising levels of knowledge has an obvious background in Plato. The third level is clearly rationalist, where empiricists would probably never aspire to rise above level two. I share the empiricist suspicion of level three.
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17211
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Understanding is the sole aim of reason, and the only profit for the mind [Spinoza]
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Full Idea:
All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting that which conduces to understanding.
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From:
Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 26)
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A reaction:
I wish philosophers would agree that the aim of their subject is to achieve broad and general understanding of reality - and nothing else. If you want to change the world, that isn't philosophy. If you think understanding is impossible, drop philosophy.
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21801
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Unlike Descartes' atomism, Spinoza held a holistic view of belief [Spinoza, by Schmid]
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Full Idea:
Unlike Descartes, who held an atomist theory of belief (that we can assent to a belief quite independently of our other beliefs), Spinoza endorsed a holistic theory of belief - that our degree of affirmation is essentially determined by our other ideas.
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From:
report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49S) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3
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A reaction:
Since I am a fan of the coherence theory of justification, I seem obligated to accept a fairly holistic account of the acceptance of beliefs. Descartes is a foundationalist.
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17199
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A man who assents without doubt to a falsehood is not certain, but lacks a cause to make him waver [Spinoza]
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Full Idea:
When we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver.
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From:
Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49)
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A reaction:
This is a seventeenth century rationalist desperate to say that the reason can deliver certainty, in the face of idiots who are totally certain about astrology, fairies and what not. Vain hope, I'm afraid. Fallibilist rationalism is required.
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5638
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'I think' is useless, because it is contingent, and limited to the first person [Spinoza, by Scruton]
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Full Idea:
The proposition 'I think' was useless to Spinoza, because it expresses a merely contingent proposition, where certainty must be founded in necessity, and because it refers to the first person, when truth comes from rising above our own mentality.
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From:
report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.5
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A reaction:
I find both of these criticisms very appealing. One might simply say that the starting point of philosophy is not the process of thinking, but the contents of thinking. Descartes' move is like astronomers becoming obsessed with telescopes.
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